During the past decade, electronic communications (such as electronic messaging or “e-mail”) has become an indispensable tool for facilitating business and personal communications. Through computer networking systems such as local-area networks (“LAN”), wide-area networks (“WAN”), and the world-wide web (“WWW”), network users can send and receive notes, messages, letters, etc., to communicate with others who are in the same office or perhaps in remote locations across the world. For example, most e-mail application programs allow a user to attach a file to be sent along with a message as an “attachment.” Attachment files might include word processing documents, graphics files, audio or video, multimedia presentation files, executable programs, spreadsheet reports, etc. A recipient will receive the e-mail message plus any attached files, which may then be opened and accessed through the appropriate application software.
In many applications, for example, it is preferable to send documents through e-mail attachments instead of as a facsimile because the recipient can then store, edit, and print an original file. For long-distance communications, it is also less costly to send documents via e-mail as compared with facsimile transmissions. For many projects, it is appropriate or desirable for a user to send a plurality of attachments to another at one time. The files to be included as attachments may each be of the same type, or may be of a multitude of different types. For example, if a user wishes to send a plurality of files via electronic mail about a particular project, the user may attach a written report about the project, a spreadsheet analysis, a multimedia presentation, and a video of a product to be developed by the project. In such a case, each of these files is attached to the same e-mail communication for transmission to a desired recipient.
Although many currently available e-mail application programs enable a user to send attachments as part of an e-mail communication, there are several problems that users often encounter when sending e-mail attachment files. If the total size of the group of attachment files exceeds a preset size limit, a user's e-mail system or a recipient's e-mail system will cancel delivery of the e-mail communication. It is common for a user to receive a “returned e-mail” or an “undeliverable” notification from the user's e-mail system gateway or the gateway from the intended recipient because the attachment files are too large. Network administrators set a size limit for e-mail communications in order to reduce traffic that slows the network. Accordingly, when a sender receives an “undeliverable” message in response to an attempt to transmit a plurality of attachments, the sender must reconfigure the e-mail by guessing which one or combination of the attachment files renders the total size of the e-mail communication unacceptably large. This requires the user to divide the single e-mail communication into multiple e-mails, run separate compression software to compress some or all of the files, or do a combination of the two. The decision as to which files are compressed or omitted from the communication is determined by process-of-elimination, as the sender must repeatedly attempt to send the e-mail until the sender no longer receives an “undeliverable” notification.
In addition to traditional e-mail systems, other systems for communicating electronic messages, such as instant messaging systems and wireless electronic messaging systems suffer from these same shortcomings. These problems significantly reduce the benefits of electronic communication systems and may negatively affect a user's productivity when engaging in electronic communications.
Thus, a heretofore unaddressed need exists in the industry to address the aforementioned deficiencies and inadequacies.